"DEM-LAND"

OUR FIRST SURVEY TO "DEM-LAND."

        Well I know its been a while since we've gotten back from our trip interior & we apologize for not putting a post up sooner but its been crazy here plus if you factor in the fact that it took me almost 12 hours to upload a couple of pictures and starting/rebooting modem & computer several times for it to finish it was something that needed some time. :) Anyways, this is just a brief summary of what went down on the trip. I (Jay) am writing this post about the actual survey & Bri is going to write a post about her & the kiddos time at our friends house interior while we were doing the survey. Thanks for being interested in whats going on & hope this can give you all a lil better picture of what we are doing. love u all!!

So this is a view from the top of the airstrip in dem. crazy to think in a year or so, this is going to be the view from our front porch....

         SO we flew into Dem on a monday morning and were greeted by all of these people. they were running around, dancing, singing, it was pretty sweet. after that went on for a little bit everyone sat down and they had "talks" which is very normal in these tribes. everyone sits and a big man will stand up and say something, then another big man will say something, & so-on. After this went on for about an hour & half we got up and they took us to where we would be sleeping for the next couple nights. (didn't have a pic of that sorry) we stayed in a traditional mens hut, small & smoky. 

          After getting settled in we hiked up the mountain a little bit to get information about villages that were around or near the airstrip. This was our primary goal for this survey. (besides actually meeting the Dem of course.) Dem already has an airstrip that they built years ago hoping to attract a missionary. This is a huge blessing. Most missionaries in the highlands of papua spend years & thousands of dollars trying to build an airstrip & Dem has one. Its very strange to have a tribe with an airstrip that has never had missionaries before but this is just one of the many amazing blessings we discovered on this survey. Anyways, since there is an airstrip we pretty much new where we would want to build our houses....near the airstrip of course. But we had to do research first. If there wasn't a good enough population around the airstrip then living there would not be a good idea, so we needed to gather as much info about what was around the strip as far as population, if there was any water sources, places to build 4 houses & a few other things.

         What we found was more than any missionary could ever hope or dream of from a tribal church planting perspective. There is a HUGE population around the airstrip, 2 different natural water sources that we can tap into and running water in our tribal homes, (a huge blessing that many missionaries dont have) area to build, the right kind of trees to build houses, etc... As we were going around we were just blown away at how many blessings this area had to offer. Things that aren't a necessity but a huge blessing when it comes to living in the jungle.

When we first landed all of the Dem & some people from another tribe gathered together for our arrival! 

Nmbal & Liku.....great guys! 

        The first couple of days we walked around 
to different hamlets, we got word list which basically means we found a guy who could speak some indonesian so we could ask him how to say a word in the Dem language. such as dog, house, water, etc... We got over 200 words. We checked out the natural streams and vegetation. Tried to understand some cultural things, & had a pig feast. They killed 12 pigs, cooked tons of sweet potatoes & greens and threw a big ole tribal style feast to thank us for coming. To the right here ----> is the group of people that were helping us get the word list. 
      Nmbal & Liku are some amazing guys. Liku, (the one in the back) is from another tribe and is a believer who has a sweet spirit and loves the Lord. Nmbal is a "big man" in Dem and has never had the chance to hear God's love story, he is and will be a huge asset to us as we move to "Dem-land." He is one of the guys that has been begging for missionaries for years & is so excited that we are going to be moving there in the next year.

In the top pic you can see me and one of the head guys for the area who was with us on a hike. In the bottom pic I was trying to get some info from Nmbal but that can be very difficult when we dont speak the same language. :) Luckily he knew a lil bit of Indonesian.

A great spot for a photo!!

We walked the airstrip to see possible locations to build houses and other info...

          After a couple of days at the airstrip we hiked a couple of hours to another village where some really important guys were from and we wanted to show them some respect by staying with them for a night. That was pretty easy trail except we had to hike pretty fast so we could make it to the village before dark. We made it just in time, got our sleeping bags set up ate some dinner and talked with some of the guys there. 

            That night we learned that a couple of the "big men" had done a leaf burning ritual before we got there and the leaves said that we (the pale skinned people) were going to fall in the river on the hike out of Dem & die & that their hearts were very heavy/worried for us. This just showed us how lost these people truly are. Several years ago a Dem man was crossing the vine bridge at the bottom of the mountain, the bridge broke and he drowned in the river. This was still very heavy on their hearts because they said they had done the same leaf ritual years before & the leaves said he was going to die & he did. Through a couple of translators we just explained that we aren't afraid & that Yahweh knows the exact day we will die regardless of where we are and so they didn't need to worry about us. 

             

this was on the hike from one village to a different one. it was soo cool hiking for a couple hours with so many people. They were singing and yelling.....pretty awesome!

        The next day we woke up at took off on our big hike. 2,000+ft straight down, then 2,000+ft straight up. It took us a couple of hours to get to the bottom where the vine bridge was that we had to cross. The whole time I wasn't really worried about the bridge but after seeing it and getting on it I was a lil bit nervous. It was a lot higher than I thought and the river was a lot bigger & faster than expected. (plus these things are made for tribal guys that are 5'ft tall & 100lbs. We all made it across, no problems and at the bottom was a great little pool of ice cold water that we jumped in and cooled off. We rested for a lil bit then headed up. We knew it was going to be rough as 2,000ft straight up anywhere isn't fun, let alone on a slippery, papuan mountain. They were saying it should take us about 3 hrs to get to where we were gonna stay that night. About a hour and a half into it, me & Logan hit a wall. I thought I was going to pass out several times as the air is so thin and we were just not used to hiking these jungle trails. (You may be laughin it up right now but for real.... these jungle trails are unlike any trail you may have hiked in the states) 

      Anyways, me & Logan just kept slowly making it up the mountain. Our buddy Mike (the guy who lives in the tribe across the mountain and is basically a tribal man & who was our guide for the survey) & a tribal believer (the tribal guy holding my hand in the pic from the house building trip) stayed with us and just kept pushing us forward. At one point the tribal guy stopped and prayed for us which was pretty sweet. We then made it to a little garden house where we decided to take a long rest. We thought we still had over a hour of hiking left and we were getting worried about making it before it got dark so we set a time limit for how long we could rest.  

     During the rest, the same tribal guy who stuck with us gave me a lil massage (amazing let me tell you) and we ate some snacks to get up our energy but I was dreading the rest of the hike. All of a sudden Mike realizes where we were and says we are only 15 minutes from where we were going to sleep that night. i told him to "shut-up" because I thought he was messing with me. But he wasn't lying. 15 minutes later we had arrived at the place we were going to stay for the night. It was where  Mike used to live & where his co-workers still were living so we got to take showers, eat some spaghetti and sleep on some cushions which was pretty awesome. 

       The next day we woke up and hiked another 1,500 ft but it wasn't as bad because we were in no rush. We just simply had to make it before dark. About lunch time we made it to Mike house (7,000+ft elevation) and I was greeted with my family waiting for me with hugs & kisses. We spent a couple of days at Mikes house helping fix a couple of things and just talking about what we saw and whats next for the Dem.

You cant tell from this pic but this bridge was about 20 ft high, over a fast river. a lil sketchy! 

        This was an awesome survey trip & we learned a lot about the Dem and what we need to do next. Our plan is to do another survey trip sometime in Feb/March to take in some tools for working on the airstrip. (We had a pilot come in with us and check & see what the strip needs to become operational & we were pleased with the check) The next trip will consist primarily of confirming with the head guys in Dem when we will be moving in permanently &  figure out where we all want to build our houses, & help them work on the airstrip for a couple of days. 

          For me the next survey will be critical to get as much info as possible since a couple of our teammates are going to be moving in while we are on furlough so we need to make sure we all are on the same page. Thank you all for your prayers & faithful support. It has been frustrating at times wondering when we will ever make it to the tribe or IF we EVER will. But God has opened the doors for us to work in an area that is literally a dream location. It is clear to us that this is where God wants us. He doesn't need us but wants us to trust Him and see what He has in store not just for the Dem but for the Stokes family also.  We are very excited to show you all some more pictures and videos of the Dem and share with you all in person about the Dem. Please continue to pray as there are sooo many things that go into moving interior from government officials giving us the "ok," finances,  co-workers, etc... We'd love to hear from you all. God Bless!

This was on the flight in...the scenery is unbelievable in the highlands of papua. 

This is a jungle airstrip..... not for the faint of heart!!